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Baseball Primer Newsblog — The Best News Links from the Baseball Newsstand Tuesday, October 20, 2009Goold: What age is too aged to be a prospect?
Thanks to Cloth Fairrags. Repoz
Posted: October 20, 2009 at 04:22 PM | 26 comment(s)
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1. flournoy Posted: October 20, 2009 at 04:41 PM (#3359404)This is idiocy. Elite players reach the majors in their early 20s because they have elite tools and skills, and demonstrate that they are beyond the level of minor league ball. You can't force non-elite prospects into that status by arbitrarily promoting them.
What #4 said, I was also going to mention that the Mutts adopted this philosophy as well.
But this is the kind of stupid reasoning you see by some in every industry- someone will notice a correlation and infer some kind of reverse causation-and act on that inference.
I believe the minimum age is generally 21, but most companies will either not rent to someone under 25, or will charge an extremely hefty insurance fee for someone under 25.
EDIT: I take that back, insurance only covered a co-pay on the rental, some set dollar amount per day. That was annoying, since the jackasses at the body shop fixing my car were so late with everything. Seriously... call them on Monday, they'd say they just ordered the parts and the car should be ready on Friday. Call them on Thursday and they'd say they forgot to order a part and it'd be ready next Tuesday. Call them the next Monday... well, you get the idea. Sorry for the rant.
I agree with you, but is it possible that they're trying to inflate the worth of their prospects? So when they need to make a trade, some stupid GM will trade for someone who really isn't that good?
I think the age cutoff depends on whether you're coming out of college or high school. I'm assuming college players get a little more slack.
Promoting Dan Hudson from A-ball to the majors in a single season is not "arbitrary." Whether it's the best approach or not is another question, but there is no reason to think that there wasn't a conscious decision each time he was bumped up another level.
Is there any research that suggests that players develop better or worse when they are promoted aggressively enough to struggle at each step versus when they are promoted slowly enough to succeed or even dominate at each stop? It sounds like the Cards are addressing that question, maybe even analytically, and that's a definite step forward...
I know more about the Mutts than the Cards, but with the Mutts, there did not seem to be any plan to ask a question like that and test it, rather there was an assumption made that "challenging" prospects was the best way to develop them....
Isn't the age issue (25-26 = not a prospect) more an issue for position players? Pitchers seem to be different animals, due to injuries and the possibility of picking up a new pitch or arm angle.
The Marlins have a history of promoting their hitters slowly, giving them full seasons one level at a time, and very few of their own hitting prospects have panned out. The two main guys that have panned out are Miguel Cabrera and Adrian Gonzalez - and both were exceptions to the rule. Cabrera went from AA to the majors in mid-season, and Gonzalez went from low-A to AA, bypassing A. Florida also did things differently with Mike Stanton this year, bumping him to AA in mid-season where he struggled; we'll see where he starts out next year, although my guess is that he's headed back to AA.
I think that teams should promote hitters when they dominate at a level, and should move them back down only when they are clearly overmatched at a level. Most teams tend to promote hitters too slowly and demote them too quickly. OTOH, teams tend to promote pitchers far too quickly (in part because they always feel as though they are short of arms).
-- MWE
For your point to stick, I would have had to been arguing for some bizarre "never promote guys quickly" strategy. Hudson is a great example of what I was talking about; he shows that he's too good for A ball, so they promote him. He shows he's too good again, and again, and he makes it to the majors, with his skills, tools and performance as his vector. But it's not like the White Sox are saying, "Awesome, it worked so well for Hudson, let's move everyone else like that as well." The Cards guy does seem to be advocating something like that though, as if they implemented a general plan to move all, or a ton of guys, really quickly, then that would somehow be beneficial. My basic counter-argument is really simple: that each promotion, and player, as you say, should be a conscious decision. Your example and my argument aren't actually in conflict. My basic argument isn't actually about moving guys slowly or quickly, but between individual decisions based on the situation of the player (his ceiling, his raw tools, his present skills, his makeup, his fundamentals, the organization's needs, etc) on one hand, and some generalized, top-down bureaucratic mandate on the other.
I rented a car at 22 and crashed it. It was a rental for work travel, and the local jurisdiction somehow didn't make a record of the accident, so I didn't pay for it in any way.
On the other hand, nobody younger than I am should be allowed to drive. Or set foot on my lawn.
I'm not convinced prospects can't learn as well in the majors as in the minors as long as they get playing time. (I more strongly suspect that it's quite detrimental to leave a prospect at the same level after they've done well.*) But few teams can give substantial playing time to one unready prospect much less two or three. And there seems little to no point in developing a player in the majors who you don't expect to have much chance to be more than a below-average player anyway -- you're giving up too much in the short term with no payback long term.
And that's one place where the Cards' (apparent) wide strategy wouldn't seem to make sense. How many top prospects do they really have who are likely to benefit from quick promotion? Unless ... they view this as an empirical test of prospect quality that is independent of scouting, their own biases, flukey performances, etc. That is:
(1) if you are confident that you can identify the "real" prospects, then you might aggressively promote them but not worry about the others;
(2) but if you admit to a large amount of uncertainty in your evaluation of prospects, perhaps aggressive promotion (at the minors level) is a way to sort out who among the top 5-10 have what it takes.
* Roosevelt Brown is always one of my favorite examples. No, he certainly never became much of a player. And maybe he never would have. But what message does it send to a 23-year-old player who puts up a 358/401/713 line at AAA (that is not a typo) when he's not even good enough to make your roster the next year much less get a chance to start? It might explain his age 24 year (309/381/496) but he got it back together at age 25 (346/381/626). My point really isn't that Brown would have been great just that it's clear that a guy who's hitting over 300 and slugging over 600 at AAA has nothing left to learn there -- use him or trade him. (And that was all at Iowa, not Colorado Springs or the like.)
what about if you buy a new mattress?
No. Riemold has been considered to have good potential ever since his college days
I'm not sure I agree with this just because baseball is a sport where failing 60% of the time (to reach base) is damn good. I can see an argument for something like football or hockey or basketball, where a single player can just dominate a game and be unstoppable, but it seems you can always get better at hitting a fastball. As for your example - Brown's hitting 358/401/713, great. But... Is he blocked and would benefit from playing every day rather than platooned or used as a bench player? Do I want him to address a specific weakness - hitting curveballs, lefties, learn a different defensive position? Would he have the mental fortitude to overcome the inevitable struggles he'll face in a more difficult league? Is no one willing to offer a reasonable trade package? Not defending or criticizing the Cubs decision, but there are a lot of issues.
Promotion to the majors, I think, should be a more clear cut decision. The best 25 make the roster, regardless of salary or age. Else, the manager has legitimate beef with the GM.
Yeah, he used to be a reliever for the Yankees.
Ay Ziggy Zoomba. He was the 61st overall pick, so yeah, he's always been a prospect even if he didn't exactly speed his way to the majors.
There are any number of players who don't become regulars until their mid 20s and beyond, who excel: Edgar Martinez, Wade Boggs, Travis Hafner. A zillion guys like that. We've talked about that a million times.
I think the obvious answer is that apart from guys like Josh Hamilton and Rick Ankiel who had really bizarre paths to becoming star-quality big league position players, generally what you see in a player's mid-20s is what you're going to get. There are exceptions to the rule (Ryan Ludwick for instance), but the exceptions are rare. Guys like Hafner, Howard, Edgar Martinez, Brian Giles...it was always obvious they could hit. Even before they set foot in the big leagues, we knew they could hit.
I'm not convinced prospects can't learn as well in the majors as in the minors as long as they get playing time.
I totally agree, Walt. That's how the Indians have developed their middle infielders for the past 5-6 years and it's worked better than I could have ever imagined.
Jhonny Peralta was rushed to the majors at age 21, put up an OPS+ of 67 and looked completely lost in '03. He went back to Buffalo in '04, hit the holy living crap out of the ball (.326/.384/.493, 61 extra-base hits) for a year and then emerged in '05 with a 137 OPS+ and 63 extra-base hits in the majors.
Asdrubal Cabrera hit .249/.310/.349 as a 20-year-old in AAA in '06, had a good half-season in AAA in '07 and got called up. Played well for two months in Cleveland in '07, was absolutely awful beyond words in the first half of '08. They sent him down for about a month, recalled him, and he's hit .311/.371/.445 since. Hit 42 doubles in '08 and missed a few weeks with an injury.
In a lot of ways, it's kind of silly to expect the same kind of development from Luis Valbuena. OTOH, given the track record the Indians have with middle infielders who got rushed, it wouldn't be a complete shock.
Peralta and Cabrera both seem to have turned the corner when they got sent back to AAA, but both had extended time as 21-year-old MLB regulars who hadn't really developed yet. It would be tough to argue that the time in the majors hurt their development.
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